Arguably, as long as everyone is having fun and there’s gear to be had and there’s no screaming in Vent… and no drama, I’m a happy guild and raid leader.

I never have tried healing, tho I do have healbot (normally disabled) for the rare occasion I’m asked to pinchheal and decursive is always running. (downed Sapphiron Last night for the first time and was only decursing person in the 10man) Without decursive I am not sure that we could have managed that fight or noth.

Do addons make me more efficient, yes, can I live without them, yes but, at reduced efficiency for decursing. Most of my addons are of the informational variety: Atlas loot, Enchantrix, Auctioneer, Altohaulic, Titan Panel (and its various subroutines), DBM, Omem, Recount, Gatherer.

I use addons to heal, and find that I spend just as much time tweaking and obsessing over the set up of my addons as I would if I was using mouseover macros. I could heal without them if I had to, but I am a brain-healing shaman so it’s hardly a great testament to my twitch capabilities. If my addons broke and I couldn’t fix them, would I sit out of a 25 man? Maybe. And maybe some DPS or tanks would have the same problem if their threat meter broke. Some, who have trained themselves to be able to monitor threat accurately without a threat meter might think that was a sign of a poor player. Some, who can heal consistently well just using raid frames (to my embarrassment I must admit that i don’t know how to operate the default raid frames) might think that I am letting myself down.

It can equally go in reverse – I used to have someone in my guild that refused on principle to use addons – no threatmeter, no decursive – nothing. And everyone was pretty frustrated sometimes at the limitations this placed on his ability to improve that extra 1% or whatever in performance. But that was just how he rolled, and in the end, it didn’t make a whole heap of difference to the level of guild we were at.

I’m a student. I have a laptop. I like to take my notes on my laptop because I can take more of them, I’m faster at typing, and I can still pay attention to what the professor is talking about. So having a laptop allows me to be a better student because I can get more information that might be relevant later.

But then I have another prof who has a no electronics rule in class. No cellphones, iPods, or laptops and I’m stuck using a pen and a clipboard. I have to pay closer to attention to what’s really relevant and what I can get away without. My mark in this class won’t be as high as the one where I’m allowed to use a laptop. But at last I’ll still pass the course.

And for the record, call me Matt. Matticus is fine too. I’m one of the few bloggers that uses their real name on the WoW blogosphere. It’s how I prefer to be addressed. I don’t use toon names because toons can change.

So I only use DBM, Itemrack, and Atlas now. Macros take up less memory, and they transfer between computers. Grid is fairly important, but I’ve raid healed without it by messing with the interface name bar settings.

seems your wow-career took more or less the same steps as mine at least in druid-ways.
I remember clicking myself through these 40 unit-frames, too. I had 4 keybindings then and guess what I was always on top in healing and fought for the least amount of overheal with a fellow resto-shaman. So I guess theses addons really can make your life easier and if someone depends on them to do their best its ok. But I thought that it was my role to decide right then what to do and what was best to do rather then depend on an addon that does the spell-choosing for me. My point always was that it has no AI build in that has the perception and experience of a human player. The results proved me right and mind your I was not the best equipped Druid in the raid, since I could only attend about 50% of the raids.

Since I am a lefty I am still used to click more than bind things to keys (i use the numeric-pad for movement), seems the druid and now especially the feral druid favour that to a point.

Maybe I suck compared to pro-players, but I was in a progression guild then – so I guess there are more ways of reaching something than the “most used” one.

Reading this again it sounds a bit arrogant which it should not. Just a little note out of my wow-life. Just like you I always try to give my best in raids and since I am a tank people really rely on me so its only natural and competing with yourself to become better at something is part of the fun of this game.

Cheers,
Moo